Wide Net Cast for Escaped Killers; They Could Be ‘Anywhere’

DANNEMORA, N.Y. — The plot was more “Shawshank Redemption” than “CSI”: two hardened inmates using power tools, handmade decoys and their hands to chisel and crawl their way out of a maximum-security prison in a subterranean escape.

But the pursuit of the fugitives from Clinton Correctional Facility may be even more old-fashioned, in large part because of the manner in which the two criminals emerged: onto a camera-less street corner and into a world in which some of the best tracking targets available — cellphones, cars and credit cards — may not apply.

“They’re basically untraceable,” said Joseph L. Giacalone, a retired New York City detective sergeant and an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Indeed, in the early hours of the hunt, law enforcement officials were using road blocks and bloodhounds to try to find David Sweat and Richard W. Matt, both of whom were serving lengthy prison sentences for murder. On Sunday, hundreds of police and corrections officers were combing the wilderness and rural communities, going house to house in neighborhoods near the prison, a formidable redoubt high in the Adirondack Mountains, just 25 miles from the Canadian border.

Describing a wide net and a sprawling investigation, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that officials had received more than 150 tips from across the state, tantalizing investigators: The State Police, for instance, confirmed a connection of one of the fugitives to the Syracuse area, where Mr. Sweat may have lived. Points of entry in Canada had been alerted, though it was not clear, the police said, if the escaped killers had access to a vehicle.

The governor himself cited the escapee’s personal connections to the Buffalo area — Mr. Matt kidnapped and beat a man to death there in 1997 — and the state’s Southern Tier, the sparsely populated border with Pennsylvania, where Mr. Sweat and an accomplice killed a sheriff’s deputy, shooting him more than a dozen times in 2002. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, announced a $100,000 reward in an effort to solve a crime he called “a crisis situation for the state.”

None of those lures or leads, however, appeared to have developed into a hot trail.

“They could be literally anywhere,” said Maj. Charles E. Guess, commander of the New York State Police troop leading the search.

On Monday morning, Mr. Cuomo echoed those remarks, saying the fugitives could be “anywhere in the country.”

“They are killers, they are murderers,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview with “Today” on NBC, one of several morning news programs he appeared on Monday. “So we want to get them back as quickly as possible.”

Mr. Cuomo also suggested that the inmates had assistance from someone with knowledge of — and access to — the prison.

“I think they had help,” he said. “I don’t think they could have acquired the equipment they needed to do this without help.” The governor said the investigation would initially focus on “the inside,” including private contractors who might have been doing work at the prison or civilian employees.

“I’d be shocked if a correction guard was involved in this,” he said.

Mr. Matt, 48, and Mr. Sweat, 34, were discovered missing during a 5:30 a.m. bed check on Saturday. Further investigation showed the two men had assembled crude dummies to fool guards, and had used cutting tools to carve holes in the sides of their adjoining cells, before scrambling down into the bowels of the prison, into a two-foot-wide pipe, and out under the 30-foot walls. They then emerged from a manhole, hundreds of feet from the prison — yet still in sight of the prison’s imposing wall and the cell blocks beyond — touching off a nationwide alert.

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Members of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision conducted a search for two fugitives in Dannemora on Sunday.CreditNancie Battaglia for The New York Times

To this point, however, technology common in urban streets, like video cameras, had not born much in the investigation. The prison’s outer wall — a blocks-long monolith that stretches along this town’s main street — does not appear to have outside cameras, and Major Guess confirmed that there was “limited surveillance tape with the facility.”

Nor, he said, did Dannemora’s streets have much to offer. “In some communities they have prevalent surveillance tape,” he said. “Nothing has been fruitful at this time for our investigation.”

Investigators had recovered “some limited cutting tools,” Major Guess said, which assisted in the escape, but were still searching for other tools they believe may have been used in the breach. He added they had also conducted a forensics sweep along the underground route the prisoners apparently used and “beyond their point of exit from the facility.” And experts say officers are likely to fan out to places like gas stations or truck stops where cameras may have caught a glimpse of the men or any accomplices.

But questions and possibilities multiplied as hours passed: Did the two men remain together after their escape, or did they separate? Did they receive assistance from an accomplice outside — or inside — the prison? How did they manage to gain access to tools to cut holes in cell walls and steam pipes, and how did nobody notice?

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A memorial on Sunday in Kirkwood, N.Y., for Kevin Tarsia, a deputy sheriff killed by David Sweat in 2002. Mr. Sweat and Richard Matt, who were both serving lengthy sentences for murder, escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility.CreditHeather Ainsworth for The New York Times

Major Guess said on Sunday that 250 law enforcement agents, including forest rangers and federal marshals, had converged on the area and were conducting a painstaking “grid search,” a time-tested tactic looking for tactile clues like footprints and broken brush. Helicopters were also in use.

The timing of the escape, and the long planning it would have involved, suggests the men waited for the warmer months to arrive before trying to flee into the heavily wooded surrounding areas. “You just don’t escape and hope you can run as fast as you can and never be found,” said Lenny DePaul, the former commander of the United States Marshals Service regional fugitive task for New York and New Jersey.

Key to the search, he said, will be figuring out whom the two men talked to by phone or in person while in prison. “Who are they married to?” he said. “Are there girlfriends? Who visited them, who did they speak to? It doesn’t have to be a recent contact. You just have to connect the dots.”

Beyond the fugitives’ possible personal connections, investigators may also look at their pasts. Mr. Matt had, in fact, escaped from a county jail in 1986. He is also known to have traveled to Mexico — where he committed a murder — and on Sunday, Major Guess confirmed that New York officials had alerted law enforcement in several Southwestern states and in Mexico.

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The authorities on Sunday searched homes on Smith Street in Dannemora, N.Y., near Clinton Correctional Facility. A $100,000 reward is offered.CreditNancie Battaglia for The New York Times

Officials may also learn from other escapes. The last to occur at a New York State prison was in 2003 at the Elmira Correctional Facility in Elmira, N.Y., when two convicted murderers dug their way out of a cell, climbed through ductwork onto a roof and shimmied down a 46-foot wall using bedsheets. Outside the prison, they took refuge in an abandoned trailer during the daylight hours and, after dark, raided an unoccupied home. The next day, with helicopters audible nearby, they stole a van at a supermarket, and were captured nearby after a brief chase, roughly 36 hours after they were reported missing.

On Sunday, the police presence remained heavy near the Clinton prison, with officers armed with rifles on many street corners, and traffic still diverted around the location of the manhole, which still lay on the street. Major Guess said officers wanted to assure residents that their town was safe, but he was not offering that promise yet.

“They still could be holed up here in Dannemora,” he said.

That said, the rows of armed men canvassing the town’s perimeter and streets did seem to assure residents, many of whom work or know those who work at the prison. “There’s always an officer driving by you,” said Judy Imlach, whose boyfriend is a corrections officer, and noted that she also has four dogs, and a shotgun. “It’s handy.”

And despite the challenges, veteran investigators said they were confident that the inmates would be caught.

“They all think they’ve got it figured out, that they’ve done the right thing and they’ll never be found again,” Mr. DePaul said of Mr. Matt and Mr. Sweat. “But they’re going to screw up. Someone’s going to screw up.”

Correction:

An article on June 8 about the hunt for two escaped prisoners in upstate New York, using information from state officials, misstated the men’s ages. Richard W. Matt is 48, not 49, and David Sweat was 34, not 35, when the article was published. (He has since had a birthday.) The error was repeated in another article on June 8 about the history of the Clinton Correctional Facility, from which the men escaped.

Jesse McKinley reported from Dannemora, and J. David Goodman from New York. Tatiana Schlossberg and Ashley Southall contributed reporting from New York. Jack Begg contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Wide Net Cast for Escaped Killers; They Could Be ‘Anywhere’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe